Officials Backtrack on Oprah Plane Mishap
Published
Officials now say that it was wear and tear, and not a collision with a bird, that damaged the windshield of Oprah Winfrey's private jet and forced it to return to the city airport.
"There was no bird involved, but the pilot did tell my captain that he felt it was a fatigue thing with the glass," Battalion Chief John Ahlman, a Santa Barbara City Fire Department spokesman, said Tuesday of the previous afternoon's incident.
Ahlman on Monday attributed the damage to a bird.
Neither the talk show diva nor her boyfriend, Stedman Graham, was injured in the 12:30 p.m. incident, which occurred shortly after the GulfStream jet took off from Santa Barbara Municipal Airport.
Winfrey bought a mansion on 42 acres of land in the hills of Montecito five years ago.